Plan for Sculpture

Do the drawings of sculptural inventions, obviously metallic, nearly build-able, represent abstract expression in an future age, a eutectic of metal-form and organic complexity? There is an inhuman quality to these forms yet they bristle and sway like something alive. Under a cap or mantle, is it a shell or perhaps an expanding sail that presents a smooth cover to the intricacies within, like a forehead? I have a half-baked theory that I mull over regarding the significance of these enigmatic forms, which he drew hundreds of times through the years. I think they sprung from these rocks, Rocks a stable place, that’s what he had, a stable place that these strangely responsive forms grew up out of, in some elemental way. These forms made possible by the drawing and our imaginations, which looks for the familiar yet can’t find it. It’s a metaphor for a possible form, individualistic, defining it’s space, self contained, dynamic, idiosyncratic. In short, it is an enigma. They were both based on and became the basis of sculpture. I think of them as a kind of tree. The tree is a metaphor for much, as is well known. These are drawings of sculptural intent, suggesting ways to animate metal, that would only work in metal, if at all. —JZ